


You Know You're In Trouble (when she uses your full name)

by HRH_Naughty



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Family, Fluff, Gen, Mom's are awesome, Sarah Rogers POV, The Avengers need a mom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:05:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3392837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HRH_Naughty/pseuds/HRH_Naughty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere, there is a reality where Sarah Rogers never contracted tuberculosis but it took her 19 year old son, and when war was declared, his best friend never returned. Dr Doom thinks this woman will distract Captain America long enough for his latest scheme to reach fruition (because of course the Fantastic Four are nowhere to be found).</p>
<p>He might have miscalculated how that would work out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is largely based in the cinematic universe but I have some background with the comics and a lot of affection for the animated series so this will be a hodge podge of it all.
> 
>  
> 
> It's been a long time since I wrote any fanfic and this is the first piece I've written not in the Buffy, LOTR or Batman universe (warned you it was a long time). I have more but this first chapter kinda works as a stand alone piece so you're getting it before I've finished writing the rest of it. Feedback feeds my easily distracted muse and my fragile ego ;)

The fight was at a stalemate, both men staring at each other as they panted for breath. Braced for the next move but neither willing to make it.

“Bucky…?” Steve implored.

“Still don’t know who that is,” though his face twisted with confused almost-recognition, as though he knew he should know who this Bucky is. People gets names. The Winter Soldier is an Asset, one of many. He has no name.

He tenses his hand around his knife and begins to raise his arm, shifting his stance and readying to launch himself at the blonde man in front of him. He watches the man in blue, the man from the bridge warily ready himself, obviously reluctant to continue the fight. But the bright lights of Times Square at night are fading in his peripheral vision as something unbearably bright grows from the star on the shield. The shadow of a human body forms as the light continues to grow and the sounds of the fighting around them stops as everyone - hero and villian - stop to watch. 

A desperate gasp introduces the woman as the light recedes and she collapses to the ground.

It’s a breathless moment as everyone waits to see what she will do. They brace themselves as she slowly turns onto her side and curls in on herself. The blinking eyes are blue and stare almost sightlessly across the road under her cheek. She shudders violently and sobs, looking up toward the Winter Soldier and Captain America who have both stepped closer to get a better look at her. 

Her eyes widen, “Joseph?”

Captain America, Steve Rogers gasps his surprise. “No Ma.”

“Steve?!” She sits up suddenly then clutches her head. "I..."

It’s the Winter Soldier who slides to his knees in front of her. “Careful, Mrs Rogers. You mighta hit your head.”

“James. When did you get back?” She asks as her eyes roll back in her head and she passes out in his arms.


	2. Chapter 2

“Joseph was my dad,” Steve says quietly in the silence. The Avengers were crowded at the observation window that overlooked the hospital bed Sarah Rogers slept in. 

The Winter Soldier scoffed. “Not sure I see the similarity myself. The man was a drunkard who didn’t deserve your ma. Though with all the fightin’ you got into as a kid, not sure you deserve her either. Surprised she never had a heart attack with all her worryin’.”

Steve grinned as he kept his eyes on the woman below. She was older - a little greyer, a few more wrinkles - but he’d never seen anything so beautiful. “Yeah. Never really had to worry though did she? I had you to watch my back.”

“It wasn’t your back that needed watching punk. Your mouth was forever writing checks your body had no way to back up. She was serious about muzzling you.” Bucky shifted his feet and rested his shoulders against the wall, bowing his body to make room for his cuffed hands. 

“What are those handcuffs made of anyway? That arm looks like it could break through adamantium.”

“Don’t give him ideas, Tony,” Clint murmurred. “And don’t think we haven’t noticed your eyes coveting it.”

“It’s very much a yellow light situation, man,” Sam agreed.

Bucky chuckled softly.

Steve cleared his throat. “It can’t break through adamantium but you’d better take them off anyway. Ma will have my head if she sees them. Besides, Bucky’s had them off since you put him against that wall.”

Bucky waved the metal fingers at his guard and resettled against the wall with his arms crossed, the broken cuffs dangling from his right wrist. “How are you going to explain this to her punk?”

“No idea, jerk, but don’t think I’m leaving you unsupervised.”

“Yeah, not sure how long this is going to last. It comes and goes without the chair.”

Tony’s head snapped up to narrow his gaze on the other brunette. “Chair?”

He grimaced. “I… The Winter Soldier. They kept the asset compliant with electro-shock and memory wipes. There’s a chair but sometimes… sometimes I’d peek through. missions in america would have me wandering off. the worst was one here in new york. his face was familiar… i don’t remember much after the train but I remember that and th-the tank. It was cold. Really, really cold, then I’d wake up and there was the chair. I can’t find the oldest files and I only know this much because of Pierce’s files. They were warned… so many warnings, even more instructions. I’m dangerous.”

“You were always dangerous Buck.”

He smirked across at Steve.

“Exactly,” the blonde agreed. “Come on. She’s waking up and you know more about you than I do these days.”

“She’s going to kick your ass when you tell her about the serum.”

“Don’t I know it,” Steve said, walking shoulder to shoulder with his old friend as they led the way to the hospital room. “Don’t think you’ll escape.”

“She’ll demand scissors for my hair before letting me leave the room.”

Steve sighed. “How do we deal with this?” He motioned to the metal arm.

Bucky looked at his hands, rubbing his flesh thumb over the metal palm. “No idea but I’m gonna need a priest after this. The shame, Steve… I don’t even remember how many but the ones I do remember...” He shuddered.

“Not your fault, Buck,” he said as he pushed the room open and motioned him in ahead.

The others waited in the hallway, the door remaining open.

Sam waited until Steve and Bucky were seated at the bedside to ask, “Where’s Tony?”

“He mumbled something about a chair and his dad’s notes and wandered off as we left the waiting room.” Clint glanced in Bucky’s direction. “He’ll have some answers by the time we get back to the tower but have you considered that maybe the face Bucky remembers is Howard Starks?”

“The fallout from this is going to be nuclear,” Sam sighed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to all of you who have left comments and kudos. 
> 
> I struggled with this chapter. It's longer and I'm not sure I covered everything I'd intended to. Getting the tone right is difficult because while the subject is serious and the characters understandably prone to angst, I'm aiming for a lighter story. This is Sarah's story - a woman who lived through 2 World Wars, the Great Depression and raising a very sickly child mostly on her own, a child who learned stubborn in the womb and turned worrying her into an Olympic Sport. She would know how to make the best of it, how to accept the sad and focus on the good. More than that, she has her son back and he's strong and healthy. Sure, she's confused but she's going to make the best of it.

Sarah’s eyes were fixed on the two broad shouldered men who entered her room, their faces familiar even though their forms were not. She sat up in the bed and waited while they seated themselves bedside her bed. “How?” was all she could manage to ask.

The brunette looked to the blonde and waited. The blonde sighed. “Ok, so we need to give you some background and ask a few questions before we can explain. And you’re going to have to take my word for some of it for now.” She nodded slowly in reply. “What year is it?”

“1964.”

He nodded. “There’s a man called Victor Von Doom. He’s a… scientist and a sorcerer. He likes to play with portals. Some of them work between two places in the same city. Some of them work across continents. Some work across dimensions. He brought you to our dimension, our world from yours. For us, it’s 2015.”

She nodded slowly, chewing her lip as she tried to wrap her mind around that information. She decided to get some simpler answers first. “I’m sorry but… Are you my son? You’re certainly larger and healthier looking but I recognise your eyes, and the shape of your face.” Her lips pursed briefly. “The tilt of your jaw is very familiar too.”

His face did a peculiar set of twists and she politely ignored the bright sheen of tears in his eyes, and the snort of amusement from the unkempt man beside him. 

“Yeah, Ma. I’m Steve. I was born in 1920, July 4. In this world, you contracted tuberculosis in 1939.”

“You died 2 weeks before your 16th birthday,” she whispered. “And Bucky volunteered the moment war was declared in Europe. He never came home.”

“Steve decided experimental surgery was a good way to join the war effort. I’d have stopped him but I was already overseas,” Bucky blurted.

“I beg your pardon?”

Steve sighed. “I continued with Art School after you passed Ma, but I wanted to *do* something.” He stood to start pacing. “Four times they declared me 4F. They wouldn’t even give me a desk job! Then Dr Erskine …. He had a serum that would heal and improve my body and allow me to serve. It worked but he was murdered and they decided I was too valuable as a lab rat to send off to war.

“They made me wear tights and dance on stage Ma,” he whined. 

She giggled at the large, wounded eyes he turned on her.

He sobered quickly. “But then they sent me to Europe to rally our troops. Bucky had been captured.”

“And you had to do something.”

“And I had to do something,” he agreed. “They were going to leave him, leave all of them. Peggy and Howard got me as close as they could and I did the rest. Dr. Erskine wanted me to be great. I couldn’t do that on a stage.”

“There were films too,” Bucky said, with a gleefulness she recognised. He always had been determined to give Steve the full ‘little brother experience.’

“No one needs to show my mother those. Ever,” Steve mumbled.

“Weren’t as fun as the real thing,” Bucky said matter-of-factly.

“You always did have a peculiar sense of fun James Barnes.”

He suddenly sat up straight, refusing to meet her eyes.

“This is where it gets complicated,” Steve said quietly.

“There was an airplane filled with bombs heading to America. I was alone and the controls had mostly been destroyed. I flew it into the ocean to stop it. We’re not really sure how it works but the serum kept me alive in the ice for 70 years.”

“Why were you alone? Where was Bucky?”

Steve choked on a sob. “He fell and I couldn’t… I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t enough. A year ago we found out he was still alive but they’d, the Nazi’s and the Soviet’s had…”

Bucky took up the abbreviated story telling. “During the time they had me as a prisoner, they gave me a version of the serum that changed Steve and when I fell, I survived. They fried my brain with electricity, filling the spaces as they saw fit. They gave me a metal arm to replace the one I lost in the fall and between missions they would freeze me, thawing me out when they needed me to change the world for them. Turned me into their personal assassin,” he spat.

Sarah clenched her jaw to keep from gaping in horror at his bald retelling of his recent life. “How did you come through that?”

“I haven’t. Your appearance has done something and he’s quiet for now," he said with a brief tap to his head. "I escaped them and the programming is failing but… I don’t know how long this will last. It’s not safe for me to stick around.”

She hummed in displeasure, taking a moment to think all of the new information through when a thought occurred to her. Her eyes narrowed, focussing on them both. “Were you two fighting each other when I arrived?”

“To be fair Mrs Rogers, it was the Winter Soldier goading a very reluctant Captain America. I don’t usually know who I am,” he finished quietly.

“You have codenames?”

Bucky smirked. “Steve’s a regular superhero.”

She blinked at her son as he lowered his head into his hands.

Bucky’s glee had returned. “Comics books, biographies, movies, cartoons. They even made trading cards.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. How long was I asleep?”

“About 3 hours.”

She nodded. “Should I be expecting to go back?”

“We don’t know yet. I’m sorry.”

She took her son’s hand. “It's not your fault.” She breathed deeply for a moment trying to stifle the urge to yawn. “I don’t have much to go back to. I think I might like to stay. If I’m allowed to choose that is.”

“Do you need to sleep some more Ma?”

“I think so Steve,” she yawned and laid down again. She smiled as he resettled the blankets around her. “Thank you, son.”


	4. Chapter 4

Natasha was waiting for them in the hallway and led everyone back to the room overlooking hospital bed. “It was definitely Doom. He’s trying to destabilise Steve.”

Clint raised his hand. “Uhm, what does he think bringing Steve’s mom here will do? You liked her, right?”

“Bringing your dad would have been more problematic,” Bucky agreed, scratching at his chin. “Doom… Latveria right? Why do I know his name? He wears a metal mask and a cape? Hmmm. I think they talked about him. They thought he was a joke until he take power in Latveria but they couldn’t work out why he was…. it was something here in New York. They were going to have me kidnap someone I think.”

“Dr Victor von Doom. He’s pretty one dimensional,” Natasha explained. “He’s obsessed with Sue Richards and several times every year he unleashes his doombots on the city in an effort to get her attention. She’s part of the Fantastic Four with her husband and her brother and a friend. They’re more often off world than here. Usually in another dimension actually. He’s more annoying than anything else.”

“No, Reed Richards is annoying. Victor von Doom is almost personable in comparison,” Clint scowled. Bucky made a mental note to look into all of these people. “What sort of villain only ever attacks when his nemeses are out of town?!” Natasha blinked at him and Clint calmed down. “Sorry.”

“Do we know if this is permanent?” Bucky asked as he stood up and paced to the window. “Do we know anything useful?”

Natasha just stared at his back before turning toward the door as footsteps strode rapidly toward them.

Tony began speaking before he was actually in the room, and being followed by Bruce. “Howard had notes from after the war. When he wasn’t searching for Steve, he and Peggy led the Commandos in cleaning up after HYDRA. They found copies of this chair in several of them.” He flicked a photo from his phone to a nearby monitor. “They worked out it wasn’t for dentistry, despite appearances. They couldn’t find anything that described what it was actually for but they found a few with electrocuted bodies still strapped into them. Barnes, whatever they put you through…. Your memories must be like swiss cheese. I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do mechanically. No, there’s nothing we *should* do mechanically to help you. They… well, you lived it.” Tony was starting to shake where he stood. “There… help but not....” he was beginning to hyperventilate, panic rising over memories of his own torture and fear of being electrocuted.

Bucky had turned to face him, concern on his face. Bruce moved slowly into Tony’s personal space. “Breathe with me Tony. In… Out… In… Out…” He continued to move slowly, keeping any motion small and where his friend could see it. He took Tony’s elbow in hand and drew him to a chair. Tony sat heavily and thrust his phone at the physicist.

The room was almost silent with worry and anticipation as Bruce took the phone and took a few moments to gather his thoughts and try to turn “Ok. The files Natasha released from SHIELD had more information. Do you mind if I share it Sargeant Barnes?”

“James or Bucky, and no.” Despite his assertion, his hands fisted tightly at his side and his stance became impossibly rigid.

“They used electricity to force, uh, James to forget, tortured him to make him pliant even when they’d erased his mind and personality and put him into cryogenic stasis when they, when they didn’t need him.” Bruce ignored the sound of a fist slamming into a wall as best he could though he had to consciously tell the Other Guy he wasn’t at risk, that the other man was angry at his memories. “Even with all of that, the efficacy of the programming diminished the longer James was away from them and whenever he was somewhere familiar to his life before the war, it broke down within hours.”

“They were more vicious when that happened. After DC, the first time I encountered Steve…” he took a shaky breath. “I’m pretty sure they were expecting you to kill me. Can’t say I’m disappointed the mask fell off for the first time in 70 years.”

Steve squeezed his shoulder. “I think we all need a break. Maybe some food? *Not* schwarma.”

Tony chuckled quietly. “Why not? You slept through it the last time.”


End file.
